ToughStations.org:
Pouring Salt On Climate Critics "Contaminated" Wounds

Over at our sister site we've listed some very strong evidence that heat islands do not impact NASA's surface temperature records. Some of the evidence includes two independent satellite system that show the same temperature trend as the surface stations



and the observation that most of the warming is occurring at the north pole (far away from major cities).



One would think that obvious conclusion is that global warming is real and is not a set of false readings caused by urban heat islands.


Despite this, climate change critics (the word critic does not distinguish between denier and skeptic) Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre have been harshly criticizing the surface record. They've been on a nation wide effort to photograph and critique every surface station in the US. Out of 1,221 surface stations they've already photographed and cataloged 33.09% of them. The stations have been ranked anywhere from class 1 (best) to class 5 which are described as:

Class 5 (error >= 5C) - Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface."

Professor Eli Rabett recently pointed out that John V, over at Climate Audit, analyzed the temperature records of the worst stations and the best stations.


As you can see from the picture above NASA's temperature trend (black) matches closely with both the best (red) and the worst (green) temperature stations. It would appear that even the most "contaminated" stations the climate critics use to refute global warming (whether or not they are actually part of NASA's temperature record) do a surprisingly decent job of reporting temperature trends. Clearly the surface stations are tough little instruments. It is also wise to notice that the best (red) stations match NASA's readings (black) with very high precision.

So I decided to create ToughStations.org to see just how tough these stations are. ToughStations.org will be posting pictures of the class 5 surface stations, their USHCN identification number, GHCN identification number and the surfacestations.org official critique/description. Each picture will also come with a link to surfacestations.org so you can see all of the pictures relevant to that station. ToughStations.org will post 10 stations at a time until the original 58 class 5's are all posted. Remember, these are the worst of the worst. Since NASA uses satellite photos to remove stations that are near bright lights I will try and figure out which of these stations (if any) are a part of NASA's official temperature record.

Station #1:
28815 TUCSON U OF AZ
Photo not available

Station #2
41715
CHICO UNIV FARM
electronics package within 8" of sensor, asphalt 20'
STO, CHICO UNIVERSITY FARM



For those that can't tell the box in the bottom right is a battery.

Station #3
41758 - 72290002
CHULA VISTA
building/asphalt/vehicles about 3 meters away


Station #4
42910 - 72594000
EUREKA WSO
building/asphalt @ 10 & 5 meters away, tree shading


Station #5
43747 - 74702001
HANFORD
building/asphalt @ 2 meters away large parking lot


Station #6
43761 - 72597002
HAPPY CAMP
building/asphalt/vehicles about 2 meters away


Station #7
43875-74516006
building/asphalt/vehicles about 2 m away, shading
HEALDSBURG FIRE DEPT


Station #8
44713- 74501004
LAKE SPAULDING
building 3 meters away, over rock/boat metal tower

The old location of the sensor:

And the new location of the sensor (on the tower)



Station #9
45032-72492001
asphalt about 3 m away, building 10 m
STO, CITY OF LODI


Station #10
45385
asphalt 1 m away, buildings with a/c unit 3 m
STO, MARYSVILLE FIRE DEPT



Station #11
46074-74516003
building w/ac unit about 3 meters away, asphalt 2 m
MTR, NAPA STATE HOSPITAL

"If We Can't Predict the Weather Next Week, How Can We Predict 100 Years into the Future?"
Part of the common arguments from skeptics/deniers series

The Attack on Modellers

One would expect oil funded lobbyists, which have a vested interest in debunking global warming theories, to attack climate models, but sometimes even a few professional meteorologists that do not receive any oil money will make similar attacks. One such professional is the 77 year old Bill Gray which claimed: "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more." Gray attacked modellers in front of Congress by saying "and they trouble is they don't know how the atmosphere ticks. They're people that make assumptions that are not valid, and they believe them."

Gray vs. Climate
Round I : Catarina

In 1979 William Gray said the formation of a hurricane in the South Atlantic was an impossibility:

Genesis does not occur in the tropical southeast Pacific and South Atlantic because the background seasonal climatology is so unfavorable. Although short-term positive deviations of genesis potential may be as large at these locations elsewhere, they can never overcome their strongly unfavorable climatoligical background.

Yet the United Kingdom's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, a branch of the UK's Met Office, had predicted that a hurricane would form in the South Atlantic in a globally warming world. So what the models said would occur, Gray said would "never" occur. In March of 2004 such an 'impossible' hurricane formed. Her name was Catarina.


2004 went on to be a record shattering year for hurricanes. The number of intense storms were double of that predicted by William Gray. His explanation was simple: "This year did not behave like any other year we have studied." . Gray's forecasts are based upon comparison to the past. Perhaps in a warming and changing world past observations of seasonal trends won't apply anymore. On the other hand the GCM models forecast based upon our understanding of the laws of physics. This brings up a rather famous quote: "The laws of physics are eternal and cannot be changed with additional research, venture capital or majority votes."

Gray vs. Climate Models
Round II: Seasonal Forecasts

In December of 2004 Gray announced that he did not expect "anything close to the U.S. land-falling hurricane activity of 2004" for the 2005 hurricane season. Gray predicted 11 named storms, 6 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes. Only a slightly above average year. Unfortunately 2005 was going to to shatter all records. By late may 2005, Gray had upped the forecast to fifteen named storms. While this was an increase it was still only about half of what to come. Meteo-France on the other hand, was using a new form of hurricane forecasting which employs climate models. They predicted 22 named storms. The end game resulted in 28 storms. While both forecasts were off Gray was much farther off than the climate models. Meteo-France was off by 6 while Gray was initially off by 17 and later 13 names storms. Grays margin of error was 2-3 times larger than the Meteo-France's climate models. The biggest margin of error by a major climate model I've found so far is UK's Met office. But even this model which predicted 16.2 storms was much better than Grays initial prediction and was even better than his revised prediction (albeit not by much). Looking at 2005 alone, the climate models are the best forecasters we have. Much better than Gray's intuition and gut instinct and traditional forcasting in general. Surely as our understanding of the climate engine increases these models will only get better and better.

Thomas Kuhn once wrote that anytime there is a paradigm shift in science it will be met with resistance. Accepting climate models might be doubly tough for William Gray as he spent 52 years developing a forecasting method that might now be obsolete. But given that the models are currently outperforming Gray's own predictions and are correctly predicting what Gray thought was impossible then it might be prudent for him to acknowledge that the modellers do in fact know what they are doing.

Source:
Discover, Discover Dialogue: Meteorologist William Gray, Kathy A. Svitil, 09.09.2005
SUMMARY OF 2004 ATLANTIC TROPICAL CYCLONE ACTIVITY AND VERIFICATION OF AUTHOR'S SEASONAL AND MONTHLY FORECASTS, William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach
Meteorology Over the Tropical Oceans, Hurricanse: Their formation, Structure and Likely Role in the Tropical Circulation, William Gray, 1979, pp. 155-218 (quote on 181)
FORECAST OF ATLANTIC HURRICANE ACTIVITY FOR SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2004 AND SEASONAL UPDATE THROUGH AUGUST, William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach

NASA's Top Dog Debunks the "1934 Y2K bug" nonsense

James Hansen, one of the world's best climate scientists, is getting little bothered by the nonsense running through the conservative blogs and mainstream media. Today he released response (PDF warning) to address this issue.

Big Correction or Little Correction?

Below is what Hansen calls the more-or-less-automatic US temperature graph. The green line visible on the right illustrates the difference between the correction and the old data:



Below is the comparison of global averages. As you can (or actually can't) see there is no discernible green line. This is because the old and the new line match so closely the difference isn't detectable to the naked eye in this graph. Clearly there was no major revision to global temps like many blogs are saying.



So it seems that a mistake is incredibly small.

Who or What Made the Mistake?

If you read Hansen's PDF you will understand that these graphs are "more-or-less-automatic"-ally generated from "near-real-time data streams" distributed by NOAA. Apparently NOAA changed the format of the near-real-time data streams and failed to notify NASA. So NASA's automated process took the data like nothing had ever happened and generated a graph. An article at the conservative blog American Thinker claims it was a Y2K bug:

It's a wild and technical story of compromised weather stations and hack computer algorithms (including, get this - a latent Y2K bug)

This is clearly incorrect. The bug was a result of a lack of communication between two agencies.

1934 and US *Global* Warming

Many blogs are making a big deal about 1934 and using this year to debunk the entire theory of global warming. Yet in a 2001 paper James Hansen said the following:

The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the GISS analysis

So even here there is nothing new. 1934 has been officially ranked hotter than 1998 since at least 2001. Well, at least in the U.S. Yet the differences are so minor that the heat crown could belong to either one. From the same paper:

In comparing temperatures of years separated by 60 or 70 years the uncertainties in various adjustments (urban warming, station history adjustments, etc.) lead to an uncertainty of at least 0.1°C. Thus it is not possible to declare a record U.S. temperature with confidence until a result is obtained that exceeds the temperature of 1934 by more than 0.1°C.

But this is for the USA only. If you look at GLOBAL temperatures 1934 is cooler than 1998 by a wide margin.

The Hottest *Global* Year

The UK's Climate Research Unit ranks 1998 while NASA ranks 2005 as the warmest. The difference is because CRU doesn't estimate arctic temperatures in areas where there aren't surface stations to take readings. The arctic is a key difference due to a concept called polar amplification which is the theory that the north pole will heat up faster than the south pole. Polar amplification is one of many smoking guns of global warming.




Sources:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro_LightUpstairs_70810.pdf
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/realdeal.16aug20074.pdf
American Thinker, Revised Temp Data Reduces Global Warming Fever, Marc Sheppard, August 09, 2007
Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947-23963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.
New York Times, Opinionator

Climate Change & Ozone Myths

The Met Office, NERC, Newscientist, GristMill and The Royal Society have articles debunking common climate change myths. More to be added later. Here is one on the Ozone layer.

Inhofe Claims the 1930's Were Warmer, Goes Unchallenged



When we look at NASA's temperature records:



We can see his comment about the 1930's has nothing to do with reality. As far as his 15th century comment well this is from the National Academy of Sciences opening statement:

3. It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies.
4. Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified.

A lot of skeptics will focus on the "less confidence" part but obviously they are taking things out of context. Amazingly nobody on Fox challenged Inhofe's statements.

Soures:
Fox News
National Academy of Sciences, High Confidence in Surface Temp Reconstructions Since A.D. 1600

ABC's Tony Jones vs. Martin Durkin:The Great Global Warming Swindle



h/t: Desmogblog

750,000 a Year Killed by Chinese Pollution: A Chinese holocaust every 8 years


The above picture is a satellite photo from NASA and this is the caption:

This SeaWiFS image of eastern China shows the widespread nature of the pollution problem. Beijing has completely disappeared under the haze.

The gray haze stands in stark contrast with the relatively normal white clouds. This picture should make it obvious that pollution is a massive problem in China. But just how much of a problem is it? Well the Financial Times is reporting that the World Bank cut out nearly a third of their "report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”."

Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research.

Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

These stats mean that China suffers 62,500 pollution related deaths per month. At this rate China is recreating the Holocaust every 8 years. A while back the BBC reported that Tehran has had as much as 3,600 air pollution related deaths in a single month. By comparison 9/11 cost 2,994 deaths and a $440+ billion war was started. If we use USA retaliatory accounting China and Tehran should spend $9.7 trillion each month in a war on pollution. As a side not one of the benefits of a "war on pollution" is that, if successful, we will become completely independent of foreign oil. That in itself is a major victory in the separate but related "war on terror". Although pollution kills a lot more people than the war on terror has a war on pollution would be a lot cheaper than a war on terror. Nobel laureate Richard Smalley advocates a nickel and dime solution:

adding 5 cents to the price of each gallon of petrofuel would provide $10 billion annually that could fund energy education and research. After five years, this surcharge could be doubled. "At worst, you will get a new generation of scientists and engineers and a cornucopia of new technologies," Smalley said. "At best, you solve the energy problem."

$10 billion over 12 months is 0.83 billion per month. Comparing that to our $9.7 trillion figure a war on pollution would cost 1/11,686th the amount that the war on terror does per each individual death. For those of you who are skeptical by these death counts feel free to divide them by 11,686 and we will still have more than enough cause to pursue a war on pollution. Obviously there are other things to consider but this should give a good general feel of how much cheaper than the war on terror a war on pollution would be. Although I don't have any statistics on how many deaths are caused in the US due to pollution we do know that 150,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer. All this and we haven't even begun to discuss global warming. These calculations are based off of what is merely what is happening right now and we are ignoring future sea level rise, hurricane increase, ocean acidification, etc. Just something to chew on.

Now for some smoggy pictures of LA!


Can you see the sky scrapers?

Source:
FT.com, 750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution, Richard McGregor, July 2 2007 22:03
Oncology Channel, Lung Cancer
Logicalscience.com, Smog in Tehran: 9/11 in a Month, Thursday, January 11, 2007
World Bank, COST OF POLLUTION IN CHINA ECONOMIC ESTIMATES OF PHYSICAL DAMAGES
Chemistry.org, Energy: the 50-Year Plan, Nancy_McGuire
PBS, Interview: Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Richard Smalley, October 20, 2003
NASA, Eastern China Pollution, Visualization Date
1999-11-20

"The CO2 will fertilize the plants and increase food production."
Part of the Common Arguments from Climate Change/Global Warming Skeptics and Deniers Series


A common argument among global warming skeptics is that the extra CO2 will boost food production and be good for environment. While this argument has plenty of support from experiments taken place in controlled chambers it tends to fall apart in the outdoors. How do we know? Well CO2 emitters (pictured below) have been build in various forests and farmlands around the globe to test the CO2 fertilization hypothesis and scientists have found that it simply doesn't hold water. For a more detailed analysis and plenty of photos please visit the article on our main site.

Al Gore was too late!!!!!!!!!!!

glumbert.com - Global Warming in 1958

For everyone that says global warming is a "recent theory" here is video proof from 1958 that the science has been around for a long time.

Source:
The Unchained Goddess, 1958

Alexander Cockburn

Living in upside down land



Alexander Cockburn writes for Counterpunch, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Times. He is a climate change skeptic and some of his claims are the complete opposite of reality. Cockburn wrote the following in a recent article:

Geologists are particularly skeptical. Peter Sciaky, a retired geologist, writes to me thus:

"No environmental conference, such as Kyoto, has ever invited a geologist, a paleontologist, a paleoclimatologist. It would seem beneficial for any scientific investigatory to include such scientific disciplines.
....*snip* ....
I do not know a single geologist who believes that it is a man-made phenomenon."

No geologists, paleontologist or peleoclimatologist believe in man-made global warming!??!? Well the two biggest geological societies are the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the 45,000+ member strong American Geophysical Union (AGU). The USGS claims that the IPCC is the "The most authoritative report on this issue". And it might be hard to imagine why a USGS geologist would be excluded from environmental meetings when their Earth Surface Dynamics Program "focuses on understanding the likely consequences of climate change, especially by studying how climate has changed in the past." The AGU released an official statement in 2003 saying that:

Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth's history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.

It looks like Cockburns expert witness is in upside down land. But just in case the society representing 45,000+ people (and all of the papers published by the AGU) aren't good enough lets look at how many geos and paleos there are at the blog realclimate.org:

• Michael E. Mann Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University
• Caspar Ammann Ph.D. Paleoclimatology
• Eric Steig PhD in Geological Sciences at the University of Washington
• Thibault de Garidel Ph.D. in Geosciences at CEREGE, Université Paul Cézanne (a.k.a. Aix-Marseille III)
• Raymond S. Bradley is Director of the Climate System Research Center (www.paleoclimate.org) at the University of Massachusetts. Ph.D paleoclimatology

No shortage of paleos and geos there. In fact they are in the majority and not the minority. Lets take a sample at one more place. One February 2, 2007 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution made a group of scientists available to comment on many of the subjects covered in the summary report issued by the International Panel on Climate Change on February 2, 2007. Their name and department is listed below:

Dr. Scott Doney, Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry
Dr. Sarah Das, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Andrey Proshutinsky, Physical Oceanography
Dr. Peter Winsor, Physical Oceanography
Dr. Karen Bice, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Scott Doney, Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry
Dr. Dan McCorkle, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. William Curry, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Lloyd Keigwin, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Jerry McManus, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Delia Oppo, Geology & Geophysics
Ruth Curry, Physical Oceanography
Dr. Terry Joyce, Director, WHOI Ocean & Climate Change Institute
Dr. Ray Schmitt, Physical Oceanography
Dr. Jeff Donnelly, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Olivier Marchal, Geology & Geophysics

It looks like once again Cockburn is living in upside down land. Seriously, could these skeptics get any worse?

Update #1: Special thanks to N. Johnson for notifying me that some of the names were repeated on the official WHOI roster due to expertise in multiple fields. The duplicate names have been removed.

Update #2: And lets not forget chapter 6 of the IPCC's fourth assessment report which is titled "Palaeoclimate" that has over 50 authors. There are two lead coordinating authors and they are Eystein Jansen and Jonathan Overpeck. Jansen is a professor in the Dept. of Geology at University of Bergen. His Ph.D. is in marine geology. The other lead coordinating author Jonathan Overpeck is a Professor of Geosciences who specializes in paleoclimatology. Again it would seem that Cockburns key witness is in upside down land. I think I'll let the readers analyze the rest.


Sources:
Counterpunch, June 9 / 10, 2007, Sources and Authorities, Dissidents Against Dogma, ALEXANDER COCKBURN
WHOI media release Scientific Experts Available to Respond to International Climate Report

The Wall Street Journal's
Op-Eds are distorting the science
Part of the Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series



The authors of realclimate.org, Scientific American, and Seed Magazine's Tim Lambert have frequently stated that while the paper itself is of good quality the WSJ editorials are of extremely poor quality and distort science. Scientific American has even challenged the editorial board to meet with top climate scientists so they can get a free lesson. The editorial board has not answered Scientific American's call.

WSJ libel

One of the most obvious distortions of science is the WSJ's claim that the hockey stick was removed from the IPCC's fourth assessment report due to being "widely rebutted":

"All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted."

The Present:
The Hockey Stick is Still There

So did the IPCC really drop the hockey stick? Well if you go to page 35 of this PDF you will see the symbol for the Mann's hockeystick (MBH1999) in the top left hand corner of figure 6.10.



What's more is that if you do a case sensitive search on the IPPC report (PDF) for "Mann" you will see that he is referenced 63 times in chapter 6 alone. A good portion of those are referencing Mann's 1999 hockey stick. And if you do a search on "hockey stick" you will get a hit on page 34 in the middle of a series of paragraphs dedicated solely to defending the Mann's hockey stick. The WSJ's claim that the fourth assessment report is "missing any reference to the infamous hockey stick" simply couldn't be further from the truth.

The Past Evidence:
No Excuse for the Wall Street Journal

Some of you may be thinking that since this opinion journal was published before the official report was released maybe they just had some bad information. The problem with this argument is that the working draft of the IPCC's fourth assessment report was freely available on the internet. One of the biggest critics of the IPCC is the tobacco and oil funded website junkscience.com. And not only was junkscience able to get a copy of the draft, but they were hosting the working drafts for anyone to download. The service was even free of charge. And if you go to chapter 6 of the working draft (PDF) you will see a very similar graph on page 14. Again, the symbol for the hockeystick (MBH1999) is in the top left hand corner.



If you search this PDF you will find that "Mann" was referenced 66 times in chapter 6 of the working draft. Again, if you do a search on "hockey stick" you will get a hit on page 28 in the middle of a series of paragraphs dedicated to defending the hockey stick from it's critics. It would appear that the author of this paper has no excuse for screwing up like this.

The Rebuttals:
It's Upside Down Land at the WSJ

So what about the "widely rebutted"? Well there was one paper in a peer review journal written by Ross McKitrick that claimed the hockey stick was flawed. But peer review is only a first filter and reproducibility is what counts. So who's work was reproduced? McKitrick's or Mann's? Well Wahl and Amman managed to reproduce the hockey stick. The results can be seen below:



This was published in the very same journal that McKitrick's paper was published. A press release subsequently said that the McKitrick's criticisms of Mann's hockey stick were "unfounded". After defending the hockey stick, Wahl and Amman challenged the public to download their code and check their work. The hockey stick was yet again defended by the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the American Meteorological Society. More on the reproducibility can be found here. So where was this 'wide rebuttal' that the WSJ op-ed talks about? Well, it certainly doesn't appear to be in peer review journals. In peer review the complete opposite is going on. The hockey stick is being widely defended. With work this sloppy one has to wonder if the WSJ editorial board has avoided Scientific Americans invitation because they already know the truth but they refuse to admit it.

*MBH1999 stands for Mann, Bradley, and Hughes with a publication date of 1999.

Sources:

• Wall Street Journal, Climate of Opinion, The latest U.N. report shows the "warming" debate is far from settled., Monday, February 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
• Authors were clear about hockey-stick uncertainties, Raymond S. Bradley Malcolm K. Hughes & Michael E. Mann Nature 442, 627 (2006). Full Text
• Nature - News: "Academy affirms hockey-stick graph"
• NAS: Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years
• Geophysical Research Letters: ROBUSTNESS OF THE MANN, BRADLEY, HUGHES RECONSTRUCTION OF NORTHERN HEMISPHERE SURFACE TEMPERATURES: EXAMINATION OF CRITICISMS BASED ON THE NATURE AND PROCESSING OF PROXY CLIMATE EVIDENCE
• National Center for Atmospheric Research: Media Advisory: The Hockey Stick Controversy
• Rutherford et al. American Meteorological Society, "Journal of Climate": Proxy-based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Methodology, Predictor Network, Target Season and Target Domain,

"James Hansen is a bought-by-John-Kerry-Communist and his models were fabricated to support his statist schemes."
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series
From Logical Science




A strong title to say the least but one I frequently see on comments of blogs and forums. Among think tanks the general tone of the accusations will be something like this:

Hansen, the director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, received a $250,000 grant from the charitable foundation headed by former Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz. Subsequent to the Heinz Foundation grant, Hansen publicly endorsed Democrat John Kerry for president in 2004, a political endorsement considered to be highly unusual for a NASA scientist.

So was there some kind of bribery going on? At the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Annual Conference NASA's chief scientist and climate modeler James Hansen defended himself from accusations of corruption. This is what he said:

I'm not a democrat. I'm a registered independent, you can go to Pennsylvania and check if you like. And my endorsement, (laughing) as you call it (laughing), endorsement... of a... John Kerry was about as luke warm as you can get. If you check that I say my favorite, who I wanted to vote for, was John McCain. Partly because he put... uh. reform of... what is the word... campaign finance reform at the top of his agenda and he also put global warming very high on his agenda. And I criticized John Kerry for I felt he was politicizing the nuclear waste disposal problem. Which I think should be a bipartisan.... We should solve that problem. It's a technical problem that can be solved and we shouldn't be politicizing it. I had an opportunity to speak to the current administration and try to make the case that global warming is becoming very urgent. And they simply ignore the scientific evidence in my opinion. And I said I thought there was a better chance that they would deal with the problem than the Bush administration. And that's why I said I was going to vote for John Kerry. But I think the way you cast this is a total misrepresentation of my actual position with regard to politics. I'm not a democrat and I'm not political and I make my decisions on scientific basis.

Listen to his words and see for yourself: MP3 (1 minute, 53 seconds) A recording of the full SEJ conference can be found here. So it would appear that James Hansen doesn't even like John Kerry that much. His voting decision was more of an "anybody but Bush" move. On top of this the $250,000 Heinz award Hansen received was not a grant but an award handed out by an independent committee. There is another problem with the model-fabricating-communist argument. In 1988 his models correctly predicted global temperatures 20 years into the future.

Source:
Desmogblog, Inhofe Aid vs. SEJ: "It's Not About Science" 27 Oct 06
Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Annual Conference.
CyberAlert, The 2,230th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 12:30pm EDT, Friday July 14, 2006 (Vol. Eleven; No. 116)

The Arnold Challenge!!!!!
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series


Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said:

Well, as I said, that I believe the scientists. It is like when my child is sick and has a huge fever, and I go to 100 doctors, and 98 doctors says this child needs immediate medical care, and 2 say no, forget it, go home and just relax, I go with the 98. It's as simple as that.

Well lets see if the skeptics can meet even these standards. Arnold claims that the dissenting 2% can be ignored. Marc Morano claims that this list of 12 skeptics is just the "tip of the iceberg" and:

A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report.

According to Eli Rabett there are roughly 20,000-ish climatologists that are members of the AGU. About 5,000 of those are Europeans taking part in a mostly American club. There are no stats on worldwide climatologists yet. But as Professor Eli also says: "if you ain't a member of the AGU you ain't no damn climate scientist in the US". Well applying Arnold's ignorable 2% to 20,000 AGU members means we can ignore, at a bare minimum, 400 climate change skeptics worldwide. So will Marc Morano be able to come meet Arnold's standards? With more than 388 missing AGU skeptics to locate and an exiguous amount of anti-consensus papers in peer review from 1993-2003, my guess is a big fat no.

Source:
Council on Foreign Relations Board Meeting, Thursday, 04/12/2007
Marc Morano – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov - 9:14 PM ET Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research
Rabett Run, How many climate scientists are there mommy?, Friday, November 10, 2006
Science, BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER:The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Naomi Oreskes

DeSmogBlog on the costs of fixing climate change....
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series
One thing her analysis overlooks is that renewable energy will allow third world countries to develop and that could have tremendous impacts on worldwide economic growth. It will also increase the health of the general population which could save countless losses in man hours.

"The Sun & Cosmic Rays are causing the warming!"
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series

This article is too wide to fit on the blog so please follow THIS LINK to the main website. The side by side pictures should make it incredibly obvious to even a small child that the sun is not the problem. Unfortunately you will still hear this argument made by Ph.D. holding skeptics and deniers that are attacking the consensus.

To make the jump to the article, click HERE!

"Scientists are creating a scare to get grant money"
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series

A common argument among skeptics/deniers is that scientists fabricate scares just to raise grant funding. If this were true then one would expect scientists to be, on average, a very deceitful and greedy bunch. So lets analyze a few scientists and see exactly what kind of people we are dealing with. The method I used to choose the following scientists was simple. They are the last three scientists that acquired a million dollars and made it to the front page of Digg news service.

Our first stop is a NASA scientist that ended up with $20 million in royalties from inventing the super soaker water gun:



Notice how he spent his money on more research and "returned to his roots". He could have spent his money on a giant house, traveled the world, and spent his money on materialistic things but it would appear this is not the case. Granted he did start his own science oriented business so one could make the argument that he is simply trying to earn more money. On the other hand one could certainly argue that there are more lucrative and less labor intensive ways of earning money than the hardcore physical sciences and he is simply following his heart. I will refrain from making an absolute judgment on this individual.

Next up is Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax. He won a $1 million dollar prize for developing a life saving technology to remove arsenic from water.

How does he plan to spend the cool million? From MSNBC:

Hussam said he plans to use 70 percent of his prize so the filters can be distributed to needy communities. He said 25 percent will be used for more research, and 5 percent will be donated to GMU.

This suddenly "rich scientist" spent his entire million dollar prize on helping others and furthering research. Could you say you would do the same?

Then there is the even more extreme example of Grigory "Grisha" Perelman who turned down the Fields medal and a million dollar Clay Mathematics Institute prize only to co-exist with his mother on a $74 a month pension.

It seems from this small sample set that many top academic/federally funded scientists simply are not driven by money and many will freely give it away if they happen to stumble upon it. At least two of these three scientists are at the self actualization stage of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Although these are only anecdotes they go a long way in showing that many top scientists are generally far more altruistic or knowledge loving than the 'grant money scamming Nazis' many politicians and climate change skeptics/deniers such as Senator Inhofe label them as. If these scientists were to claim global warming was a 'no-brainer' would Senator Inhofe be able to label them as scam artists?

More counterarguments against the "grant scam" can be found here. Readers, if you know of other stories please post.

Source:
MSNBC, $1 million prize awarded for water purifier, Bangladesh-born professor devised simple method for removing arsenic
The Sydney Morning Herald, Maths genius living in poverty, Nadejda Lobastova and Michael Hirst in St Petersburg, Russia August 21, 2006
Digg
Clay Mathematics Institute, Millennium Problems

"Cars Amount to Only 6% of Man-Made CO2"
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series

This argument has been made on digg, among a few other places. Nobody ever provides a source but I see this stat pop up somewhat often. If you find out who the initial source of this little factoid is please post in the comments section. Now it's time for us to R.T.F.R. Straight from the Department of Energy's report:

Although transportation is a vital part of the economy and is essential for everyday activities, it is also a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2003, the transportation sector accounted for about 27 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions, up from 24.8 percent in 1990.

And now for a little fun with math. Lets see how big his/her goof was.

27 (DOE stat) / 6 (Denialist/Skeptic stat) * 100 = 450%

Which basically means this denialist/skeptic has error bars 450% larger then his facts. And to be honest his/her error bars are even larger than that because:

Estimates of GHG emissions do not include additional "lifecycle" emissions related to transportation, such as the extraction and refining of fuel and the manufacture of vehicles, which are also a significant source of domestic and international GHG emissions.

The simple act of driving around in America released a total of 1,958.6 million metric tons of CO2 in 2005. And transportation energy use is expected to increase 48 percent between 2003 and 2025. All of these statistics are for America. There are 6 billion rapidly developing people on the planet. It is quite a stretch to even imply that fossil fuel powered cars are not a threat to the environment. Again, if you know where this myth originated please post a link.

Update for clarification:
In 2003 the US emitted 1,848.8 Tg of CO2. Only 4.3 Tg of that is from electrical sources. Since almost all of our transportation (about 99.76%) comes is powered by oil I thought it was prudent to lump all oil powered forms of transportation together. If you want to limit the discussion to passenger vehicles I would suggest we change our number from 27% of total emissions to 17% of our total emissions. It's still a sizable sum. Still, if we can remove oil from privately owned light trucks (Ford F150's, Dodge Rams, etc) and passenger vehicles then we should be able to do the same with heavy duty vehicles. At that point 'cars' are responsible for 22.14% of our yearly CO2 emissions. The only question remaining is whether or not we can power our aircraft with some form of biofuel.



Source:
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/greenhousegases.htm
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420r06003summary.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/index.html
EPA, Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the U.S. Transportation Sector
1990–2003, pg 18
EPA 430-R-07-002, INVENTORY OF U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND SINKS:
1990 – 2005, pg 29

Ever wonder where the 2006 hurricanes went?
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series



The quick and dirty answer is that a dust storm called Calima (pictured above via satellite) killed off all of the hurricanes in the Atlantic. There was no comparable dust storm on the other side of the globe so the Pacific has been rip snorting hurricanes just as expected. A total of 30 tropical depressions and Typhoons (Asian term for hurricane) hit Asia. There were 25 in the east Pacific and 11 near Australia. This brings the 2006 Pacific tropical depression/typhoon count to a total of 66.

For lots more info on hurricanes and their possible connection to global warming, feel free to visit the non-blog version of this website at:

Logicalscience.com: HA! Look at 2006! Where are the hurricanes?

"Skeptics Have Their Funding Cut"
Conspiracy Theorists, Here's Your Chance!
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers series


One of the most common and damaging accusations by climate change skeptics and deniers is that the pillars of our intellectual societies have become corrupt. The skeptics and deniers say climate scientists are now motivated to skew the science in attempt to fabricate a disaster. The biggest doomsayers are promoted while the skeptics have their funding cut. In short, they are insinuating all of the scientists on this world-wide consensus are partaking in a fraud. A few of these arguments can be seen below.

From the website World Climate Report:

"Science has become as blatantly biased in the direction of tragedy as television. But, given the way we fund and reward science and scientists, it was inevitable."

David E. Wojick says the IPCC is:

"...an artfully constructed presentation of just the science that supports the fear of human-induced climate change. It is as one sided as a legal brief, which it resembles."

Then there are blanket condemnations such as:

"We know that one's career and income are closely related to one's position on global warming."

Dr. Bill Gray joins the foray with:

The minority of scientists who are skeptical that humans have had large influences on climate change have been purposely squeezed out of the climate research funding picture.

Now there are some real problems with this argument. And I've outlined a few of them on the non-blog version of this website. But the real development is that BBC has called upon these skeptics to show their cards. There have been lots of name-calling and barking but not a whole lot of bite. Many are saying it's time to show the evidence or shut up. The following is from the BBC:

If you have evidence of research grants turned down because of a clash with the prevailing consensus, of instances where journals or conference organisers or consensus bodies have rejected "inconvenient" findings, please send it to us;

Please read the full BBC article as to what constitutes evidence. And if you have any please e-mail it to them. After all, good climate science makes good climate policy. In the mean time we will be waiting for the evidence of the massive worldwide conspiracy.

Source:
BBC, Sceptics: Cards on the table please!, Richard Black, Friday, 1 December 2006, 17:14 GMT
World Climate Report, Proving Science Bias, December 22, 2005*
Hurricanes and Climate Change:Assessing the Linkages Following the 2006 Season, William M. Gray
John-Daily.comThe UN IPCC's Artful Bias, Glaring Omissions, False Confidence and Misleading Statistics in the Summary for Policymakers, David E. Wojick, Ph.D.

*unknown author, probably Pat Michaels or Robert Balling

They are a small close nit group of climate scientists.
Part of the: Common Arguments by Skeptics and Deniers.



A lot of climate change deniers make the argument that climate scientists are unreliable because they are a close nit group. The deniers claim climate scientists are biased to protect each other and cover up each others mistakes. The deniers have even made this argument under oath in the halls of Congress. Well this is Eli Rabett's response as to the number of climate scientists:

• 1956 Atomspheric
• 1564 Biogeochemistry
• 334 Cryosphere
• 751 Global climate change
• 4736 Hydrology
• 2326 Ocean sciences
• 634 Paleoclimate
• 2004 Volcanology (you can argue here if you want)

If we look at foreign members we get a total of 19340, which in the spirit of Iraq Body Count we can take as a lower limit, but certainly within a factor of 2.

(if you ain't a member of the AGU you ain't no damn climate scientist in the US, just like the AMA)

12,301-14,305 scientists in the United Stats alone is not exactly what I would call a small group of self protecting butt buddies. Michael Mann also has a retort which he submitted to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The image he references is located at the top of this blog entry.

Let me next address Wegman’s equally specious and unsupported claim that scientists who work in a given field cannot objectively review the work of their colleagues and competitors in that field. By way of illustration, I have attached (as Attachment 1 to these Responses ) the famous 1927 photograph of attendees of the Solvay Physics meeting in Brussels. It shows a group of 29 physicists engaged in a collegial, small conference. Virtually every attendee was a driving figure behind our understanding of modern physics. Appearing in the photograph are Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, Fermi, Dirac, de Broglie, Born, Pauli, Langmuir, Planck, Curie, Compton, Ehrenfest, Lengevin, and others of equal prominence. The members of this group all knew each other, worked with each other, collaborated on research with one another, visited each other, went mountain-climbing together, and so forth. Familiarity did not compromise their contributions to science. While I do not claim that the group I collaborate with is likely to duplicate the feats of the scientists who gathered in Brussels 80 years ago, the point remains --- scientific collaboration does not turn scientists into timid lapdogs unwilling to criticize the work of their colleagues.

Source:
Realcliate.org Followup to the ‘Hockeystick’ Hearings 31 Aug 2006
M. Mann Answers to Followup Questions and Supporting Materials Related to July 27 2006 Hearing of U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Rabett Run How many climate scientists are there mommy? Friday, November 10, 2006